Lava River, Adept (Patreon)

This week's map is the Lava River (25x25), another simple map for the interstitial combats of your volcanic adventures. And, because I thought it might be handy, I prepared each version of this map both with and without the bridge and ruins, changing the flow of the map drastically. 

The Adept alternate version of this map is one where I've drastically recolored it to be a stream in a cave- shadowy and dim. I'd say this would be an easy include for treks through the Underdark or adventures through massive caverns, underground locations where it's not unusual that you can't see the walls of the cave. Enjoy!

1. The most important thing I had in mind for this map was traversability of the different platforms. I wanted there to be a few paths that a character could take to cross the river without using the bridge, hopping from platform to platform, so that when I removed the bridge this map wouldn't be quite so treacherous for less agile adventurers. 

Beyond that, I felt that this map should feature more large platforms to contrast last week's volcanic map, so as to offer some variety of terrain if using both on the same adventure. I think those two points were all I had in mind when designing this one, not a lot to consider when trying to keep things simple, I suppose.

2. Since I had spent last week figuring out how I wanted to depict these thin, squat rock platforms, I was able to jump right into this map without taking time to try out various styles. Coupled with the fact that my wife took a much-needed week off, she was able to keep an eye on our baby, so I was finally able to completely catch up on my work and get my schedule back in order (which is why I'm posting this one on a Friday instead of a Sunday). 

Anyway, coming off of last week's design efforts, the rock platforms came together with incredible speed while I listened to the new Discworld audiobooks, which are really really excellent, go check them out. I'm still enjoying the new way I'm drawing these thin platforms, it's a nice change of pace from my usual systematic approach to drawing platforms, or at least it's much faster and more pleasant to draw. 

3. The coloring was also much easier this week, since I had done much of the gruntwork last week of experimenting with palettes. The only difference was that this time I was able to simplify the layers down somewhat, since last week I had finished the map with several adjustment layers on top of each other as I endlessly tweaked the colors and lighting. This time I combined all those adjustments and used that as the basis for this week's colors, which proved to be effective and immediately got me 80% of the way to imitating the lighting I ended with previously. I'm hoping this will be only faster for next week's map, but it's usually around this point where I rethink everything and start experimenting once again, so we'll see.